Immoscout24
The leading Real estate marketplace
Immoscout24 is a platform for real estate classifieds operating in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. With over 6 million visitors and 10.000 ads per month, it is the top dog in the real estate market. Here you can find everything from parking spaces to penthouses. And all this has to get onto the website somehow. And that's where I come in...
My Role:
Employed as Product Design Lead, I was responsible for the insertion area with my team. That`s how users place adds on Immoscout. I did Research, conducted user interviews, made a strategical analysis together with PM and Data science, and designed the User experience and the visual journey around the whole insertion funnel.
*To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Rabo Bank.
The Mission
The insertion on the website dates back to 2012 and was last minimally adjusted in 2016. The problem that we saw is that we were losing listings, and the conversion rate inside the insertion funnel was getting worse. Over the time of 9 years, we had a lot of accumulated feedback from customers, mainly describing the issues they encountered while inserting their properties.
Graph shows losing of listings
Conversion rate over the insertion steps
Understanding the problems
Since we received very different feedback on the insertion, we came up with the idea of classifying the whole thing by steps. At that time, our insertion consisted of 7 steps. With this method, we could better concentrate on the analysis of the respective steps and group the pain points.
Key observation 1
The biggest pain point we did observe was at step 5. Where the users see the pricing of the packages for the first time. The majority felt disturbed because they assumed it was for free, or at least much cheaper and then drop out of the journey.
We learned that our customers are very price sensitive, that after investing some time in filling the fields, the price communication has a deeply negative impact on their experience.
Key observation 2
Customers complained that the process was too long and that they did not have an overview of what needed to be filled out. The module showing the remaining steps discourages customers from even starting the process because they think its to long and they are missing some necessary information.
That differs drastically from users that already published an ad before.
we have learned that users would like to have full transparent overview of the steps they needed in order to publish their ad. "All in one place"
Key observation 3
A big portion of customers complained that some fields were unnecessary for their type of advertisement, since the same fields are available for all object types, be it an apartment, a restaurant or a parking lot, this makes little sense for the users. Many of them did not know what information was required for some fields, and complained about the lack of help.
We learned that in order to provide the desired experience to our customers we needed to have an insertion that adapts independently to the needs of every object type.
Our Goal
Together in a workshop we discussed how to combine the learnings into a concept that would address all pain points of the users. Our ambition for the new insertion is that It should be:
Fast – Enjoyable – Predictable - Recommendable
Since it is a complete end-to-end journey, we had to consider the following points.
1. Who uses our product (Creating Personae)
2. When and where do they use it? (Customer Journey cycle)
3. How do we measure success or failure internally? (Tracking concept)
4. Is it technically feasible (Feasibility check) if yes?
5. which technical platform is best suited?
Team Workshop Immoscout24
Agile approach
We have decided to use an agile framework for our approach since we are building a complete new funnel that will be replacing the old one we need to be able to test quick and often in an iterative way as we go.
We divided the project into 3 Phases: Strategy, Design and Growth. The fundamental idea here is to test in every phase
Current state
The current version offers users a flow divided into 7 pages. The fields are left-aligned and divided into rows which creates an overflow of unused whitespace on the right.
Users need to scroll over the page, fill in forms and click on a CTA in order to complete the step and go to the next step on another page, this results in users losing the overview of the process, and forgetting what already has been filled out.
more than 90% of the fields do not offer any help for the users in order to understand their meaning and therefore usually remain empty, this leads to the fact that many listings are not filled out to 100%, and that has an impact on the quality of the listings.
Creating personae
We analyzed the different needs through qualitative research where we had 15 in-depth interviews with banking customers that used different banking products. With the insights, we created 4 segments based on different criteria points, four interview partners per segment. Having these 2 main Personae we created 4 scenario personae that represented a different life path. The Investor, the long term saver, the young and hip entrepreneur, and the typical family father. We then created a high fidelity persona to be able to use it for customer journey analysis and different scenarios when creating the product.
Competitor Analysis
We looked at some of the best products in real estate. In this way we could already identify some weaknesses and of course also strengths that would be of great help when it comes to our new design approach.
Creating the new insertion process
After the extensive analysis, we wanted to create a process tailored to the user. This process had to be adapted to the customer's individual needs, be as fast as possible, and be easy for everyone to understand. To achieve this, before beginning the insertion we need to know the usertype, type of property and if he wants to sell or rent. In this way we are able to offer a experience that is adapted to the selections the user made.
Getting essential information fast
On the Insertion landing page the user would find different information regarding the insertion itself, but the only action to get started was the CTA that would lead the user inside the insertion process. However we wanted to use this area to find out who the user is, and what kind of property he want to advertise. For this we need 3 data points from the user_
1. Is he an owner, a professional or is he renting
2. Does he want to sell or rent out
3. The object type that he want to advertise
Now we can provide a tailored experience that adapts to the special needs of exactly that customer.
Old Navigation Vs New Navigation
In the old version, our users complained about the perceived length of the insertion. The navigation shows users the remaining steps to publication, but each segment is on a different page, which caused users to lose track. We solved this problem by customizing the insertion to the needs of the ad, thus eliminating many unnecessary fields. To the left we placed a redesigned version of the navigation that allows users to keep track at all times, and the whole insertion process (except for payment) is on the same page.
Early price reveal
The second big problem that many users complained about was that the price for the ad is displayed too late.
Since Immoscout24 has different prices for different regions, we first do need the information about "postal code and city" after which an exact price for the 3 possible packages can be displayed.
We put the module with the location information at the beginning of the insertion to give our users the information about the price as soon as possible.
After the user has entered his zip code, the price information appears directly underneath the field.
We used this "input to reveal" method across the whole insertion not only to reduce the space of the modules, but also to engage users in interacting with the product.
Improved bundle options
The old version of the bundle page was clearly outdated, we wanted something more visually appealing but also clearly differentiates the features that every package has to offer. Our goal was to move more people from the small packages to the medium package. We moved the small package to the right because users read from left to right and in this way they would see the other packages before they see the small one. We implemented more detailed icons that enhance the understanding of each feature. Besides that we also added a description text that helps the user understand what performance each package has to offer.
Results after implementation
The image on the left shows bookings of packages from september (Where new design was implemented) to december. We clearly see that users move from the smallest package to the new recommeded medium package. Overall a +107% Increase in take rate.
The graph on the right shows the ARPU (average revenue per user) change from september to december. Almost an improvement of +10% in 3 Month.